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Apps demand more cloud

June 2nd, 2017

F5 Networks’ Future of the Apps report, released at its recent EMEA conference in Barcelona revealed that the growing intelligence built into apps would make ever-greater demands on the cloud, writes SEAN BACHER.

“Nobody understands the cloud, it’s a f***ing mystery.” This quote from the Sex Tape movie staring Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel may be true for some, but more and more more companies are beginning to understand the cloud and the benefits it offers.

This was made clear at F5 Network’s recent annual EMEA conference, where it presented its Future of the Apps report. The report revealed that apps are becoming more intelligent – thus requiring more resources and putting more of a strain on local networks, meaning that moving to the cloud is a logical step.

“As an app’s workload increases, or as it evolves and more people begin to use it, it can become unstable, often crashing and costing a company a fortune in downtime,” said Sangeeta Anand, senior vice president for product management and product marketing at F5 Networks

Moreover, many companies don’t have the resources to secure their apps properly and are leaving themselves open to vulnerabilities like ransomware, DDoS attacks and general hacking, which is continually evolving.

These are just a few reasons why moving to a public cloud environment or using a hybrid local/public cloud is beneficial.

“More than a fifth of the companies surveyed plan on running their applications and services in a cloud environment, with around 80 percent already using some sort of local/public hybrid cloud infrastructure,” said Anand.

New cloud services

At the event, F5 Networks announced a range of new services to help companies make the cloud migration.

Until last week, said Anand, F5’s cloud services were limited to Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

“Many of our clients wanted more of a choice, so we have extended our service offerings to include Google Cloud, giving customers a good choice when deploying their apps to the public cloud.”

In addition to its Google Cloud integration, F5’s range of new cloud services make managing apps both locally and in a public cloud easy and secure.

Its Application Connector, for example, allows a company to deploy a locally hosted application to Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. It then allows one to load balance the app between the local app and the one in the cloud.

“Should a business’ local infrastructure start battling under the load, F5’s Application Connector creates a secure connection to the hosted version, balancing out the load and ensuring that the app continues to run, no matter how resource intensive it is,” said Anand.

The hybrid setup also ensures redundancy, and with the Application Connector in place, should changes to an app need to be made, they only need to be made in one place.

“Security is top of our checklist when helping clients deploy to the cloud, and we have noticed many businesses have disparate security systems protecting various parts of their network, making it difficult to stay on top of security.”

F5’s services offer a holistic overview on their apps – both locally and in the public, she said. “For instance, when the WannaCry campaign was discovered, it was imperative to find the vulnerability, patch it and stop it from spreading any further. Our services allowed clients to do this quickly and rest assured that the virus had not spread to any other services or products.”

Security is just one driver of cloud adoption

“We have noticed that many companies are not happy with a single cloud deployment any more,” she said. “They want to offer their services and application across multiple clouds which makes deployment very difficult as each public cloud provider runs a different framework.”

F5 Networks has launched cloud solution templates for Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. The templates simplify and automate most of the deployment, ensuring that all security measures are met and that the application remains stable, regardless of which cloud hosts it.

“With these services and product offerings, we aim to take the mystery out of the cloud and make it easy and cost effective for companies of all sizes to make the move.”

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